01-12-2011, 05:43 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-12-2011, 07:01 AM by James H. Fetzer.)
JFK, the CIA and The New York Times, Part 1
by Jim Fetzer
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." William Colby, former CIA Director
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In 1977, Carl Bernstein, who would subsequently co-author All the President's Men (1994) with Bob Woodward, one of the most celebrated books in American political history, published "The CIA and the Media", Rolling Stone (October 20, 1977), reporting that, with respect to its infiltration of the American media, "By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc." Those who lent their cooperation to the agency were Williarn Paley of the CBS, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of The New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA included ABC, NBC, the AP, the UPI, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune. It was therefore fascinating to discover that The New York Times, which has a history of suppressing research on the assassination of JFK, was publishing "The Umbrella Man: A video interview with the author of SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967)", widely regarded as a classic of conspiracy research on the assassination of JFK.
Its author, Josiah Thompson (whose nickname is "Tink"), was at one time a professor of philosophy at Haverford College and, when I returned from 13 months in the Far East with the 1st Battalion, 12th Marines, 3rd Marine Division, where we had been anchored out in Kauschung Harbor in Formosa (now Taichung Harbor, Taiwan), where I had been awakened at 3:30 AM by the officer of the deck who told me that JFK had been shot and, then again, an hour later that they had caught the guy who had done it, who was a communist, which I thought at the time was "pretty fast work", I obtained a copy of his book while stationed at the USMC Recruit Depot in San Diego as a series commander, supervising 15 DIs and 300 recruits going through the training cycle, which I read with great interest, especially because I had earned my A.B. at Princeton in philosophy and, like myself, Tink had served in the Navy (in the UDT rather than the Marine Corps) and was doing research on JFK, which was attracting my interest as well.
SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS
At the time, I thought it was an admirable study, which payed special attention to the Zapruder film, to which the author had had access in conducting research with LIFE magazine, ostensibly for an article about the film. Apparently, Tink took a copy of the film without authorization and there was a falling out. LIFE rescinded permission it had granted for him to use frames from the film, which were replaced by very high-quality charcoal sketches--not as good as the actual frames, but still valuable. Among the most important features of his book was an analysis of the "double-hit", according to which, in frame 312, JFK's head moves forward under the impact of a shot fired from behind, while in frames 313-316, his head moves violently back and to the left, which is indicative of a shot fired from in front--to the right/front, actually, which many have assumed to have meant from the grassy knoll or even the picket fence. The book created quite a sensation at the time and lead to Thompson's story being feature on the front page of The Saturday Evening Post (2 December 1967).
According to the analysis published there, three assassins had fired four shots, all of which hit. The first, fired from the Texas School Book Depository, hit JFK in the back. The second, fired from the roof of the County Records Building, hit Gov. John Connally in the back. The third, again from the Book Depository, hit JFK in the back of the head, moving it forward, while the fourth was fired from the picket fence and struck him in the right forehead, killing him. For its time, this was excellent work, which offered a stunning contrast to the "official account" of the assassination, which featured three shots with one miss, where one hit JFK at the base of the back of his neck, passed through without hitting any bony structures, and entered John Connally's back, while the other hit him in the back of the head, killing him. We know today that the "magic bullet" scenario is not only provably false but not even anatomically possible, where no bullet could have taken the alleged trajectory, because cervical vertebrae intervene. I even presented a lecture about it at Cambridge during an international conference, which would be published in an international, peer-reviewed journal under the title, "Reasoning about Assassinations".
While Tink's book was very good for its time, his analysis of the shot sequence was superseded by the far more extensive study by Richard Sprague, COMPUTERS AND AUTOMATION (May 1970), which demonstrated that there had been more shooters and more shots, which I have refined based upon our studies of the medical evidence and the ballistics published in three books, Assassination Science (1998), Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), and The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003). The issue over which we have repeatedly clashed, however, concerns the authenticity of the film that was the foundation for his book. I suppose it would be only natural that he would resist evidence that the film has been faked (edited, altered, revised, fabricated), when it pulls the rug out from under his classic study. The proof is abundant and compelling, as anyone who has followed my columns about JFK here can verify for themselves by reading "JFK: Who's telling the truth: Clint Hill or the Zapruder film?", right here at Veterans Today. If you read the comments on Six Seconds in Dallas (1967), moreover, you will find those who are adamant that Tink got it right and the rest of us got it wrong. The first "reader's review", for example, makes these claims:
5.0 out of 5 stars Best book ever about the Kennedy assassination - bar none, January 22, 2005
By Michael K. Beusch (San Mateo, California United States) - See all my reviews
As an American who believes in his heart that President Kennedy was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy, it pains me to see so many half-baked and flat-out irresponsible studies of the assassination. These run the gamut from the ridiculous defenses of the Warren Report (Gerald Posner, in particular) to the most outlandish conspiracy books hawking absolutely ridiculous theories (James Fetzer's books claiming that the Zapruder film is a fake is the latest). Both the Warren Commission's defenders and the way-out conspiracy theorists do the search for the truth a great disservice. Both groups pick and choose whatever evidence suits their needs. . . .
Indeed, Josiah has been attacking me for doing research on Zapruder film authenticity since 1996, when I organized the first symposium devoted to this issue at the JFK Lancer Conference. I conducted a 10.5 hour preliminary discussion the day before with a dozen or more students of the film, which led to the 4.5 hour presentation the following day with the best half-dozen, including Jack White, Noel Twyman, David Lifton, David Mantik and Chuck Marler, which can be obtained as a 2-disc DVD from Lancer to this day. Our encounters have been relentless since then, numbering in the hundreds. By now, there may have been as many as a thousand, where he has referred to my first book as "Assassinated Science", even though it published the studies of the autopsy X-rays by David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., which revealed that the X-rays had been altered to conceal the true causes of death of JFK, and by Robert Livingston, M.D., a world authority on the human brain and an expert on wound ballistics, who concluded that, given the consistent and multiple reports from experienced and highly qualified Parkland physicians, who described cerebellar as well as cerebral tissue extruding from fist-sized wound at the back of his head, that the brain shown in the diagrams and photographs at the National Archives could not possibly be of the brain of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Since it also included multiple studies of Zapruder film alteration, perhaps that was Tink's overriding concern.
THE UMBRELLA MAN
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His credibility was not enhanced when he attacked Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), which many regard as the best published on the death of JFK, claiming that a study by Gary Aguilar, M.D., showing the consistency of descriptions of that fist-sized blow out to the back of the head had been highly consistent across witnesses in Dealey Plaza, others at Parkland Hospital, and even those who observed the body at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the autopsy would be performed. While we now know that James Humes, who was performing the autopsy, actually took a cranial saw to the head and enlarged the head wound to make it look more like the effect of a shot fired from behind (but inexplicably allowed two witnesses to watch him do this, as Doug Horne, Inside the ARRB (2009), has documented in detail, which means that Aguilar's study is not quite as accurate as I initially supposed), the case for that massive defect--or one that was even larger--is amply established by this study. When Tink said that Gary's chapter was the only good one in the book, therefore, I knew he had committed a blunder, since if Gary was right, then the film--which does not show this defect--had to have been faked. Indeed, since I had found a late frame, 374, in which the blow out is visible, while it has been blacked out in frames 313-317, for example, the film is not even self-consistent, which means that it cannot, in its totality, possibly be authentic.
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The Umbrella Man pumping his umbrella
When I discovered that the estimable Errol Morris, described as "an Academy Award-winning filmmaker ('The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara') and a recent New York Times best-selling author ('Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography'), whose first film, 'Gates of Heaven', is even on Roger Ebert's list of the 10 best movies ever made, and his latest, 'Tabloid', has just been released on DVD", was conducting a series of interviews with Tink, I was fairly incredulous. It was striking to me that he had used "Believing as Seeing" as the title of his study about photography, since we had shown that "Seeing is not Believing" in relation to the Zapruder film. In agreement with most students of JFK, I had formed the opinion that the Umbrella man was complicit in the assassination, not only because of his association with the Cuban, but because he had been pumping his umbrella up and down in what we took to be a signal to the assassins that their target was still alive and to continue shooting. The video interview in The New York Times, however, portrayed the Umbrella man as having been completely innocent and present with an umbrella to protest policies, not of JFK, but of his father in relation to an earlier era:
OP-DOCS
The Umbrella Man': A video interview with the author of SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967)
The Umbrella Man: On the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Errol Morris explores the story behind the one man seen standing under an open black umbrella at the site.
By ERROL MORRIS
Published: November 21, 2011
COMMENTS (254)
For years, I've wanted to make a movie about the John F. Kennedy assassination. Not because I thought I could prove that it was a conspiracy, or that I could prove it was a lone gunman, but because I believe that by looking at the assassination, we can learn a lot about the nature of investigation and evidence. Why, after 48 years, are people still quarreling and quibbling about this case? What is it about this case that has led not to a solution, but to the endless proliferation of possible solutions?
Years ago, Josiah Thompson, known as Tink, a young, Yale-educated Kierkegaard scholar wrote the definitive book on the Zapruder film "Six Seconds in Dallas." Thompson eventually quit his day job as a professor of philosophy at Haverford College to become a private detective and came to work with many of the same private investigators I had also worked with in the 1980s. We had so much in common philosophy, P.I. work and an obsessive interest in the complexities of reality. But we had never met.
Last year, I finally got to meet and interview Tink Thompson. I hope his interview can become the first part of an extended series on the Kennedy assassination. This film is but a small segment of my six-hour interview with Tink.
where this reader's comment (and there were more than 250 at that point in time) spoke volumes to me about Tink's interview and the impression it was conveying to the public:
23. HIGHLIGHT (What's this?)
Mark M
New York, NY
November 22nd, 2011
6:16 am
This was wonderful. The best - and most convincing - debunking of any and all conspiracy theories I have ever seen, and in just 6 minutes too.
I submitted a comment of my own after listening to what Tink had to say, which was a fascinating effort to undermine not just conspiracy research related to the Umbrella man but, it turned out, with respect to JFK conspiracy research generally. With The Times running performance art like this from Josiah, I regarded it as most unlikely that they would publish my comment, even though I was exposing a false assumption at the foundation of his presentation:
Your Submitted Comment
Display Name
James H. Fetzer
Location
Oregon, WI
Comment
How can Josiah Thompson have written "the definitive book" on the Zapruder film when its fabrication has been proven beyond reasonable doubt? The limo stop was removed, the wounds were changed, and, having reduced the time frame, Clint Hill's activities--about which he has been consistent for more than 47 years--contradict what we see in the extant film. See, for example, "JFK: Who's telling the truth: Clint Hill or the Zapruder film?" For more on how it was done, see "US Government Official: JFK Cover-Up, Film Fabrication". For a tutorial on some of the ways we know the film we have is not the original, see John Costella, "The JFK Assassination Film Hoax", http://assassination...ella/jfk/intro/ I dismembered Josiah's feeble defense of the authenticity of the film in THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003). Check it out. The American people are entitled to the truth about the assassination of our 35th president. It isn't a close call.
THE UMBRELLA MAN DEBATE
At this point, I was rather incensed that Tink was playing fast and loose with one of the most interesting figures whose image was recorded in the Zapruder film and by others with cameras in Dealey Plaza at the time. I therefore initiated a thread on The Education Forum to discuss it, entitled "Tink's performance in The New York Times: Josiah Thompson shows his true colors". Among my earliest posts was one laying out arguments that Tink had shaded the evidence in a number of important respects, where I would later add photographs to support my points. When David S. Lifton, the author of Best Evidence (1980), asked for "credible evidence" that Witt was not the person he claimed to be to the HSCA, I posted three images that supported my objections to their identification:
(1) As I have previously observed, the Umbrella Man and the Cuban were obviously together, where any explanation of the presence of the Umbrella Man must account for their association:
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(2) While everyone else in Dealey Plaza was dumbfounded, the Umbrella man and the Cuban did not act surprised by the assassination--and their faces have been obscured in certain photos, which is highly suspicious by itself:
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(3) Moreover, they hang around together, sitting on the curb, as though nothing especially unusual had taken place, where I had supposed virtually everyone would agree that their behavior is abnormal under these circumstances:
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When Jim DiEugenio, the author of Destiny Betrayed (1992), posted this summary of Witt's testimony, I thought the case against Witt was cinched:
Posted 25 November 2011 - 07:36 PM
Has anyone read Witt's testimony of late? I don't think so.These are some of the things he said.
1.) He never planned on doing what he did until that morning.
2.) He did not know the exact parade route.
3.) He just happened to wander around for a walk and guessed where it would be.
4.) Contrary to what Cliff says, he did what he did with no relation to JFK's policies, only Joe Sr.
5.) What did the Cuban looking guy say? Words to the effect, They shot those people. (Oh really Louie?)
6.) Admits he sat there for up to three minutes and that he never even looked behind him at the picket fence! (Truly surprising.)
7.) He never did anything like this before or since, and he was not a member of any conservative group or organization.
8.) He placed the umbrella on the sidewalk and then picked it up. He wavers on whether this is definitely the umbrella he had that day.
9.) He often uses the conditional, like I think that is me, or that may be the guy I sat next to.
At this point in time, I felt very confident that Jim and I were right in debunking Tink's suggestion that the Umbrella man was Louie Steven Witt, including that Tink was assuming that identification, when it is instead a conclusion that requires its own substantiation evidence. In logic, this is called "begging the question" by assuming what requires independent proof. He was ignoring that more reasonable identifications would be of the the scenario, I thought, to a "t". The very idea that Witt would offer this fantastic story about Joe Kennedy, which is preposterous on its face, and Tink would claim it was "so extraordinary and unbelievable it must be true", struck me as simply absurd.
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It seemed far more likely that, by pumping his umbrella, Witt was signaling to the assassins that JFK was still alive, which makes sense, rather than an obscure historical allusion that no one, including Jack, would have grasped. By remarking that there are always alternative explanations that might be true, when you isolate one element of a complex picture, Tink was employing the technique known as "divide and conquer". If all you knew were what Tink had presented in this little clip, then you could rather easily be taken in; but once you consider the other evidence we have available, his scenario is not remotely plausible. But I thought it would be appropriate to review what others have thought, so I turned to Jim Marrs' classic study, Crossfire (1989), pp. 29-32, for such light as it might shed on the subject.
JIM MARRS IN CROSSFIRE (1989)
About the time that Kennedy was first hit by a bullet, two men standing near each other on the north sidewalk of Elm Street acted most strangelyone began pumping a black umbrella while the other waved his right arm high in the air.
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The Umbrella Man and the Cuban raising his fist
These and subsequent actions by this pair aroused the suspicions of researchers over the years, yet the initial federal investigation ignored both men. Their activities are known only through analysis of assassination photographs.
As Kennedy's limousine began the gentle descent into Dealey Plaza, a man can be seen standing near the street-side edge of the Stemmons Freeway sign holding an open umbrella. He holds the umbrella in a normal fashion and the top of the umbrella almost reaches the bottom of the sign.
In photos taken minutes before Kennedy's arrival, the umbrella is closed and, immediately after the shooting, pictures show the umbrella was closed again. The man's umbrella was only open during the shooting sequence. Furthermore, as seen in the Zapruder film, once Kennedy is exactly opposite the man with the umbrella, it was pumped almost two feet into the air and then lowered.
At the same time, the second manin photos he appears to be of a dark complexion, perhaps a black man or Hispanicraised his right hand into the air possibly making a fist. This man was located on the outer edge of the Elm Street sidewalk opposite the umbrella man, who was on the inner edge.
The man with the open umbrella was the only person in Dealey Plaza with an open umbrella. Under the warm Texas sun, there was no reason to carry an open umbrella at that time.
Two main theories have emerged concerning the "umbrella man" and his activities that day. Assassination researcher Robert Cutler has long maintained that the umbrella may have been a sophisticated weapon that fired a dart or "flechette" filled with a paralyzing agent. Cutler's theory has been the object of dirision over the years but it is supported by the 1975 testimony of a CIA weapons developer who told the Senate Intelligence Committee that just such an umbrella weapon was in the hands of the spy agency in 1963.
Charles Senseney, who developed weaponry for the CIA at Fort Detrick, Maryland, described a dart-firing weapon he developed as looking like an umbrella. He said the dart gun was silent in operation and fired through the webbing when the umbrella was open. Senseney said the CIA had ordered about fifty such dart weapons and that they were operational in 1963.
Cutler theorized that the umbrella was used to fire a paralyzing dart into Kennedy immobilizing him for marksmen with rifles. He claims this theory accounts for the small puncture wound in Kennedy's throat described by Dallas doctors, but which was altered by the time of the Bethesda autopsy. According to Cutler, this dart explains Kennedy's lack of motion during the shooting sequence. Since such a weapon existed and since both the actions of Kennedy and the "umbrella man" were consistent with the operation of such a weapon, Cutler's theory cannot be completely dismissed.
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They were there together and remained together
However, most assassination researchers prefer the alternative theory that both of these suspicious men may have been providing visual signals to hidden gunmen. This theory suggests that Kennedy was killed by a crossfire coordinated by radiomen. The two men, who were among the closest bystanders to the President when he was first struck, gave signals indicating that he was not fatally hit and therefore more shots were needed.
A fascinating twist on this latter theory came from researcher Gary Shaw, who said the two men may have been providing Kennedy with a last-second sign of who was responsible for his death. Shaw recalled that throughout the planning of the Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA officers had promised an "umbrella" of air protection of the Cuban invaders. This "umbrella" failed to materialize because Kennedy refused to authorize U.S. military support for the invasion. According to Shaw's theory, the man with the open umbrella symbolized the promise of an air-support "umbrella" while the dark-complected man may have been one of the anti-Castro Cuban leaders known to Kennedy. Thus, in the last seconds of his life, Kennedy may have seen the open umbrella and the face of a Cuban he knew was involved in the Bay of Pigs and realized who was participating in his death.
But this is all speculation. The existence of the "umbrella man" and the dark-complexion man is fact. Their activities after the assassination especially bear study. While virtually everyone in Dealey Plaza was moved to action by the assassinationeither falling to the ground for cover or moving toward The Grassy Knollthese two men sat down beside each other on the north sidewalk of Elm Street.
Here the dark-complexion man appears to put a walkie-talkie to his mouth. In a photograph taken by Jim Towner, what seems to be an antenna can be seen jutting out from behind the man's head while his right hand holds some object to his face.
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They remained together long after the assassination
Several photos taken in the seconds following the assassination show both of these men sitting together on the Elm Street sidewalk. Moments later, the man with the umbrella gets up, takes one last look toward the motorcade still passing under the Triple Underpass, and begins walking east in the direction of the Depository. The dark-complexion man saunters toward the Triple Underpass passing people rushing up The Grassy Knoll. He can be seen stuffing some objectthe walkie-talkie?into the back of his pants.
Despite the suspicious actions of these two men, there is no evidence that the FBI or the Warren Commission made any effort to identify or locate them. Officially they did not exist. Yet over the years, this pair became the focal point of criticism by private researchers. Researchers claimed the lack of investigation of these men was indicative of the shallowness of the government's handling of the assassination.
Once the House Select Committee on Assassinations was formed in 1976, researchers urged an investigation of both men. The Committee finally released a photograph of the "umbrella man" to the news media and urged anyone with knowledge of the man to come forward.
Coincidentallyif it was a coincidencethe "umbrella man" suddenly was identified in Dallas a few weeks after this national appeal. In August 1978, a telephone caller told researcher Penn Jones, Jr., that the man with the umbrella was a former Dallas insurance salesman named Louis Steven Witt. Jones contacted some local newsmen (Jim Marrs being one of them) and together they confronted Witt, who then was working as a warehouse manager. Witt refused to talk with newsmen but acknowledged that he was in Dealey Plaza on the day Kennedy was killed.
Jones later wrote: "I felt the man had been coached. He would answer no questions and pointedly invited us to leave. His only positive statement, which seemed to come very quickly, was that he was willing to appear before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in Washington."
Witt indeed appeared before the Committee during its public testimony. His story was comic relief compared to the intense scrutiny of witnesses like Marina Oswald and Warren Commission critics. His story was facile and improbable and when the umbrella that Witt claimed was the same one he had had in Dealey Plaza in 1963 was displayed, it suddenly turned wrong-side out, prompting one Committee member to quip: "I hope that's not a weapon."
Witt told the Committee that on the spur of the moment, he grabbed a large black umbrella and went to Dealey Plaza to heckle Kennedy. He claimed that someone had told him that an open umbrella would rile Kennedy. While Witt offered no further explanation of how his umbrella could heckle the president, Committee members not Witt -- theorized that the umbrella in some way referred to the pro-German sympathies of Kennedy's father while serving as U.S. ambassador to Britain just prior to World War II. They said the umbrella may have symbolized the appeasement policies of Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who always carried an umbrella.
According to Witt:
"I think I went sort of maybe halfway up the grassy area [on the north side of Elm Street], somewhere in that vicinity. I am pretty sure I sat down. . . . [when the motorcade approached] I think I got up and started fiddling with that umbrella trying to get it open, and at the same time I was walking forward, walking toward the street. . . . Whereas other people I understand saw the President shot and his movements; I did not see this because of this thing [the umbrella] in front of me . . . My view of the car during that length of time was blocked by the umbrella's being open."
Based on the available photographs made that day, none of Witt's statements were an accurate account of the actions of the "umbrella man" who stood waiting for the motorcade with his umbrella in the normal over-the-head position and then pumped it in the air as Kennedy passed.
Witt's bizarre storyunsubstantiated and totally at variance with the actions of the man in the photographsresulted in few, if any, researchers accepting Louis Steven Witt as the "umbrella man."
And there continues to be no official accounting for the dark-complexion man who appears to have been talking on a radio moments after the assassination. The House Committee failed to identify or locate this man and Witt claimed he had no recollection of such a person, despite photographs that seem to show the "umbrella man" talking with the dark man.
Witt claimed only to recall that a "Negro man" sat down near him and kept repeating: "They done shot them folks."
Interestingly, one of the Committee attorneys asked Witt specifically if he recalled seeing the man with a walkie-talkie, although officially no one has ever admitted the possibility of radios in use in Dealey Plaza.
(continued)
by Jim Fetzer
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." William Colby, former CIA Director
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In 1977, Carl Bernstein, who would subsequently co-author All the President's Men (1994) with Bob Woodward, one of the most celebrated books in American political history, published "The CIA and the Media", Rolling Stone (October 20, 1977), reporting that, with respect to its infiltration of the American media, "By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc." Those who lent their cooperation to the agency were Williarn Paley of the CBS, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of The New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA included ABC, NBC, the AP, the UPI, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune. It was therefore fascinating to discover that The New York Times, which has a history of suppressing research on the assassination of JFK, was publishing "The Umbrella Man: A video interview with the author of SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967)", widely regarded as a classic of conspiracy research on the assassination of JFK.
Its author, Josiah Thompson (whose nickname is "Tink"), was at one time a professor of philosophy at Haverford College and, when I returned from 13 months in the Far East with the 1st Battalion, 12th Marines, 3rd Marine Division, where we had been anchored out in Kauschung Harbor in Formosa (now Taichung Harbor, Taiwan), where I had been awakened at 3:30 AM by the officer of the deck who told me that JFK had been shot and, then again, an hour later that they had caught the guy who had done it, who was a communist, which I thought at the time was "pretty fast work", I obtained a copy of his book while stationed at the USMC Recruit Depot in San Diego as a series commander, supervising 15 DIs and 300 recruits going through the training cycle, which I read with great interest, especially because I had earned my A.B. at Princeton in philosophy and, like myself, Tink had served in the Navy (in the UDT rather than the Marine Corps) and was doing research on JFK, which was attracting my interest as well.
SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS
At the time, I thought it was an admirable study, which payed special attention to the Zapruder film, to which the author had had access in conducting research with LIFE magazine, ostensibly for an article about the film. Apparently, Tink took a copy of the film without authorization and there was a falling out. LIFE rescinded permission it had granted for him to use frames from the film, which were replaced by very high-quality charcoal sketches--not as good as the actual frames, but still valuable. Among the most important features of his book was an analysis of the "double-hit", according to which, in frame 312, JFK's head moves forward under the impact of a shot fired from behind, while in frames 313-316, his head moves violently back and to the left, which is indicative of a shot fired from in front--to the right/front, actually, which many have assumed to have meant from the grassy knoll or even the picket fence. The book created quite a sensation at the time and lead to Thompson's story being feature on the front page of The Saturday Evening Post (2 December 1967).
According to the analysis published there, three assassins had fired four shots, all of which hit. The first, fired from the Texas School Book Depository, hit JFK in the back. The second, fired from the roof of the County Records Building, hit Gov. John Connally in the back. The third, again from the Book Depository, hit JFK in the back of the head, moving it forward, while the fourth was fired from the picket fence and struck him in the right forehead, killing him. For its time, this was excellent work, which offered a stunning contrast to the "official account" of the assassination, which featured three shots with one miss, where one hit JFK at the base of the back of his neck, passed through without hitting any bony structures, and entered John Connally's back, while the other hit him in the back of the head, killing him. We know today that the "magic bullet" scenario is not only provably false but not even anatomically possible, where no bullet could have taken the alleged trajectory, because cervical vertebrae intervene. I even presented a lecture about it at Cambridge during an international conference, which would be published in an international, peer-reviewed journal under the title, "Reasoning about Assassinations".
While Tink's book was very good for its time, his analysis of the shot sequence was superseded by the far more extensive study by Richard Sprague, COMPUTERS AND AUTOMATION (May 1970), which demonstrated that there had been more shooters and more shots, which I have refined based upon our studies of the medical evidence and the ballistics published in three books, Assassination Science (1998), Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), and The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003). The issue over which we have repeatedly clashed, however, concerns the authenticity of the film that was the foundation for his book. I suppose it would be only natural that he would resist evidence that the film has been faked (edited, altered, revised, fabricated), when it pulls the rug out from under his classic study. The proof is abundant and compelling, as anyone who has followed my columns about JFK here can verify for themselves by reading "JFK: Who's telling the truth: Clint Hill or the Zapruder film?", right here at Veterans Today. If you read the comments on Six Seconds in Dallas (1967), moreover, you will find those who are adamant that Tink got it right and the rest of us got it wrong. The first "reader's review", for example, makes these claims:
5.0 out of 5 stars Best book ever about the Kennedy assassination - bar none, January 22, 2005
By Michael K. Beusch (San Mateo, California United States) - See all my reviews
As an American who believes in his heart that President Kennedy was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy, it pains me to see so many half-baked and flat-out irresponsible studies of the assassination. These run the gamut from the ridiculous defenses of the Warren Report (Gerald Posner, in particular) to the most outlandish conspiracy books hawking absolutely ridiculous theories (James Fetzer's books claiming that the Zapruder film is a fake is the latest). Both the Warren Commission's defenders and the way-out conspiracy theorists do the search for the truth a great disservice. Both groups pick and choose whatever evidence suits their needs. . . .
Indeed, Josiah has been attacking me for doing research on Zapruder film authenticity since 1996, when I organized the first symposium devoted to this issue at the JFK Lancer Conference. I conducted a 10.5 hour preliminary discussion the day before with a dozen or more students of the film, which led to the 4.5 hour presentation the following day with the best half-dozen, including Jack White, Noel Twyman, David Lifton, David Mantik and Chuck Marler, which can be obtained as a 2-disc DVD from Lancer to this day. Our encounters have been relentless since then, numbering in the hundreds. By now, there may have been as many as a thousand, where he has referred to my first book as "Assassinated Science", even though it published the studies of the autopsy X-rays by David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., which revealed that the X-rays had been altered to conceal the true causes of death of JFK, and by Robert Livingston, M.D., a world authority on the human brain and an expert on wound ballistics, who concluded that, given the consistent and multiple reports from experienced and highly qualified Parkland physicians, who described cerebellar as well as cerebral tissue extruding from fist-sized wound at the back of his head, that the brain shown in the diagrams and photographs at the National Archives could not possibly be of the brain of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Since it also included multiple studies of Zapruder film alteration, perhaps that was Tink's overriding concern.
THE UMBRELLA MAN
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His credibility was not enhanced when he attacked Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), which many regard as the best published on the death of JFK, claiming that a study by Gary Aguilar, M.D., showing the consistency of descriptions of that fist-sized blow out to the back of the head had been highly consistent across witnesses in Dealey Plaza, others at Parkland Hospital, and even those who observed the body at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the autopsy would be performed. While we now know that James Humes, who was performing the autopsy, actually took a cranial saw to the head and enlarged the head wound to make it look more like the effect of a shot fired from behind (but inexplicably allowed two witnesses to watch him do this, as Doug Horne, Inside the ARRB (2009), has documented in detail, which means that Aguilar's study is not quite as accurate as I initially supposed), the case for that massive defect--or one that was even larger--is amply established by this study. When Tink said that Gary's chapter was the only good one in the book, therefore, I knew he had committed a blunder, since if Gary was right, then the film--which does not show this defect--had to have been faked. Indeed, since I had found a late frame, 374, in which the blow out is visible, while it has been blacked out in frames 313-317, for example, the film is not even self-consistent, which means that it cannot, in its totality, possibly be authentic.
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The Umbrella Man pumping his umbrella
When I discovered that the estimable Errol Morris, described as "an Academy Award-winning filmmaker ('The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara') and a recent New York Times best-selling author ('Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography'), whose first film, 'Gates of Heaven', is even on Roger Ebert's list of the 10 best movies ever made, and his latest, 'Tabloid', has just been released on DVD", was conducting a series of interviews with Tink, I was fairly incredulous. It was striking to me that he had used "Believing as Seeing" as the title of his study about photography, since we had shown that "Seeing is not Believing" in relation to the Zapruder film. In agreement with most students of JFK, I had formed the opinion that the Umbrella man was complicit in the assassination, not only because of his association with the Cuban, but because he had been pumping his umbrella up and down in what we took to be a signal to the assassins that their target was still alive and to continue shooting. The video interview in The New York Times, however, portrayed the Umbrella man as having been completely innocent and present with an umbrella to protest policies, not of JFK, but of his father in relation to an earlier era:
OP-DOCS
The Umbrella Man': A video interview with the author of SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967)
The Umbrella Man: On the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Errol Morris explores the story behind the one man seen standing under an open black umbrella at the site.
By ERROL MORRIS
Published: November 21, 2011
COMMENTS (254)
For years, I've wanted to make a movie about the John F. Kennedy assassination. Not because I thought I could prove that it was a conspiracy, or that I could prove it was a lone gunman, but because I believe that by looking at the assassination, we can learn a lot about the nature of investigation and evidence. Why, after 48 years, are people still quarreling and quibbling about this case? What is it about this case that has led not to a solution, but to the endless proliferation of possible solutions?
Years ago, Josiah Thompson, known as Tink, a young, Yale-educated Kierkegaard scholar wrote the definitive book on the Zapruder film "Six Seconds in Dallas." Thompson eventually quit his day job as a professor of philosophy at Haverford College to become a private detective and came to work with many of the same private investigators I had also worked with in the 1980s. We had so much in common philosophy, P.I. work and an obsessive interest in the complexities of reality. But we had never met.
Last year, I finally got to meet and interview Tink Thompson. I hope his interview can become the first part of an extended series on the Kennedy assassination. This film is but a small segment of my six-hour interview with Tink.
where this reader's comment (and there were more than 250 at that point in time) spoke volumes to me about Tink's interview and the impression it was conveying to the public:
23. HIGHLIGHT (What's this?)
Mark M
New York, NY
November 22nd, 2011
6:16 am
This was wonderful. The best - and most convincing - debunking of any and all conspiracy theories I have ever seen, and in just 6 minutes too.
I submitted a comment of my own after listening to what Tink had to say, which was a fascinating effort to undermine not just conspiracy research related to the Umbrella man but, it turned out, with respect to JFK conspiracy research generally. With The Times running performance art like this from Josiah, I regarded it as most unlikely that they would publish my comment, even though I was exposing a false assumption at the foundation of his presentation:
Your Submitted Comment
Display Name
James H. Fetzer
Location
Oregon, WI
Comment
How can Josiah Thompson have written "the definitive book" on the Zapruder film when its fabrication has been proven beyond reasonable doubt? The limo stop was removed, the wounds were changed, and, having reduced the time frame, Clint Hill's activities--about which he has been consistent for more than 47 years--contradict what we see in the extant film. See, for example, "JFK: Who's telling the truth: Clint Hill or the Zapruder film?" For more on how it was done, see "US Government Official: JFK Cover-Up, Film Fabrication". For a tutorial on some of the ways we know the film we have is not the original, see John Costella, "The JFK Assassination Film Hoax", http://assassination...ella/jfk/intro/ I dismembered Josiah's feeble defense of the authenticity of the film in THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003). Check it out. The American people are entitled to the truth about the assassination of our 35th president. It isn't a close call.
THE UMBRELLA MAN DEBATE
At this point, I was rather incensed that Tink was playing fast and loose with one of the most interesting figures whose image was recorded in the Zapruder film and by others with cameras in Dealey Plaza at the time. I therefore initiated a thread on The Education Forum to discuss it, entitled "Tink's performance in The New York Times: Josiah Thompson shows his true colors". Among my earliest posts was one laying out arguments that Tink had shaded the evidence in a number of important respects, where I would later add photographs to support my points. When David S. Lifton, the author of Best Evidence (1980), asked for "credible evidence" that Witt was not the person he claimed to be to the HSCA, I posted three images that supported my objections to their identification:
(1) As I have previously observed, the Umbrella Man and the Cuban were obviously together, where any explanation of the presence of the Umbrella Man must account for their association:
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(2) While everyone else in Dealey Plaza was dumbfounded, the Umbrella man and the Cuban did not act surprised by the assassination--and their faces have been obscured in certain photos, which is highly suspicious by itself:
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(3) Moreover, they hang around together, sitting on the curb, as though nothing especially unusual had taken place, where I had supposed virtually everyone would agree that their behavior is abnormal under these circumstances:
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When Jim DiEugenio, the author of Destiny Betrayed (1992), posted this summary of Witt's testimony, I thought the case against Witt was cinched:
Posted 25 November 2011 - 07:36 PM
Has anyone read Witt's testimony of late? I don't think so.These are some of the things he said.
1.) He never planned on doing what he did until that morning.
2.) He did not know the exact parade route.
3.) He just happened to wander around for a walk and guessed where it would be.
4.) Contrary to what Cliff says, he did what he did with no relation to JFK's policies, only Joe Sr.
5.) What did the Cuban looking guy say? Words to the effect, They shot those people. (Oh really Louie?)
6.) Admits he sat there for up to three minutes and that he never even looked behind him at the picket fence! (Truly surprising.)
7.) He never did anything like this before or since, and he was not a member of any conservative group or organization.
8.) He placed the umbrella on the sidewalk and then picked it up. He wavers on whether this is definitely the umbrella he had that day.
9.) He often uses the conditional, like I think that is me, or that may be the guy I sat next to.
At this point in time, I felt very confident that Jim and I were right in debunking Tink's suggestion that the Umbrella man was Louie Steven Witt, including that Tink was assuming that identification, when it is instead a conclusion that requires its own substantiation evidence. In logic, this is called "begging the question" by assuming what requires independent proof. He was ignoring that more reasonable identifications would be of the the scenario, I thought, to a "t". The very idea that Witt would offer this fantastic story about Joe Kennedy, which is preposterous on its face, and Tink would claim it was "so extraordinary and unbelievable it must be true", struck me as simply absurd.
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It seemed far more likely that, by pumping his umbrella, Witt was signaling to the assassins that JFK was still alive, which makes sense, rather than an obscure historical allusion that no one, including Jack, would have grasped. By remarking that there are always alternative explanations that might be true, when you isolate one element of a complex picture, Tink was employing the technique known as "divide and conquer". If all you knew were what Tink had presented in this little clip, then you could rather easily be taken in; but once you consider the other evidence we have available, his scenario is not remotely plausible. But I thought it would be appropriate to review what others have thought, so I turned to Jim Marrs' classic study, Crossfire (1989), pp. 29-32, for such light as it might shed on the subject.
JIM MARRS IN CROSSFIRE (1989)
About the time that Kennedy was first hit by a bullet, two men standing near each other on the north sidewalk of Elm Street acted most strangelyone began pumping a black umbrella while the other waved his right arm high in the air.
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The Umbrella Man and the Cuban raising his fist
These and subsequent actions by this pair aroused the suspicions of researchers over the years, yet the initial federal investigation ignored both men. Their activities are known only through analysis of assassination photographs.
As Kennedy's limousine began the gentle descent into Dealey Plaza, a man can be seen standing near the street-side edge of the Stemmons Freeway sign holding an open umbrella. He holds the umbrella in a normal fashion and the top of the umbrella almost reaches the bottom of the sign.
In photos taken minutes before Kennedy's arrival, the umbrella is closed and, immediately after the shooting, pictures show the umbrella was closed again. The man's umbrella was only open during the shooting sequence. Furthermore, as seen in the Zapruder film, once Kennedy is exactly opposite the man with the umbrella, it was pumped almost two feet into the air and then lowered.
At the same time, the second manin photos he appears to be of a dark complexion, perhaps a black man or Hispanicraised his right hand into the air possibly making a fist. This man was located on the outer edge of the Elm Street sidewalk opposite the umbrella man, who was on the inner edge.
The man with the open umbrella was the only person in Dealey Plaza with an open umbrella. Under the warm Texas sun, there was no reason to carry an open umbrella at that time.
Two main theories have emerged concerning the "umbrella man" and his activities that day. Assassination researcher Robert Cutler has long maintained that the umbrella may have been a sophisticated weapon that fired a dart or "flechette" filled with a paralyzing agent. Cutler's theory has been the object of dirision over the years but it is supported by the 1975 testimony of a CIA weapons developer who told the Senate Intelligence Committee that just such an umbrella weapon was in the hands of the spy agency in 1963.
Charles Senseney, who developed weaponry for the CIA at Fort Detrick, Maryland, described a dart-firing weapon he developed as looking like an umbrella. He said the dart gun was silent in operation and fired through the webbing when the umbrella was open. Senseney said the CIA had ordered about fifty such dart weapons and that they were operational in 1963.
Cutler theorized that the umbrella was used to fire a paralyzing dart into Kennedy immobilizing him for marksmen with rifles. He claims this theory accounts for the small puncture wound in Kennedy's throat described by Dallas doctors, but which was altered by the time of the Bethesda autopsy. According to Cutler, this dart explains Kennedy's lack of motion during the shooting sequence. Since such a weapon existed and since both the actions of Kennedy and the "umbrella man" were consistent with the operation of such a weapon, Cutler's theory cannot be completely dismissed.
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They were there together and remained together
However, most assassination researchers prefer the alternative theory that both of these suspicious men may have been providing visual signals to hidden gunmen. This theory suggests that Kennedy was killed by a crossfire coordinated by radiomen. The two men, who were among the closest bystanders to the President when he was first struck, gave signals indicating that he was not fatally hit and therefore more shots were needed.
A fascinating twist on this latter theory came from researcher Gary Shaw, who said the two men may have been providing Kennedy with a last-second sign of who was responsible for his death. Shaw recalled that throughout the planning of the Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA officers had promised an "umbrella" of air protection of the Cuban invaders. This "umbrella" failed to materialize because Kennedy refused to authorize U.S. military support for the invasion. According to Shaw's theory, the man with the open umbrella symbolized the promise of an air-support "umbrella" while the dark-complected man may have been one of the anti-Castro Cuban leaders known to Kennedy. Thus, in the last seconds of his life, Kennedy may have seen the open umbrella and the face of a Cuban he knew was involved in the Bay of Pigs and realized who was participating in his death.
But this is all speculation. The existence of the "umbrella man" and the dark-complexion man is fact. Their activities after the assassination especially bear study. While virtually everyone in Dealey Plaza was moved to action by the assassinationeither falling to the ground for cover or moving toward The Grassy Knollthese two men sat down beside each other on the north sidewalk of Elm Street.
Here the dark-complexion man appears to put a walkie-talkie to his mouth. In a photograph taken by Jim Towner, what seems to be an antenna can be seen jutting out from behind the man's head while his right hand holds some object to his face.
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They remained together long after the assassination
Several photos taken in the seconds following the assassination show both of these men sitting together on the Elm Street sidewalk. Moments later, the man with the umbrella gets up, takes one last look toward the motorcade still passing under the Triple Underpass, and begins walking east in the direction of the Depository. The dark-complexion man saunters toward the Triple Underpass passing people rushing up The Grassy Knoll. He can be seen stuffing some objectthe walkie-talkie?into the back of his pants.
Despite the suspicious actions of these two men, there is no evidence that the FBI or the Warren Commission made any effort to identify or locate them. Officially they did not exist. Yet over the years, this pair became the focal point of criticism by private researchers. Researchers claimed the lack of investigation of these men was indicative of the shallowness of the government's handling of the assassination.
Once the House Select Committee on Assassinations was formed in 1976, researchers urged an investigation of both men. The Committee finally released a photograph of the "umbrella man" to the news media and urged anyone with knowledge of the man to come forward.
Coincidentallyif it was a coincidencethe "umbrella man" suddenly was identified in Dallas a few weeks after this national appeal. In August 1978, a telephone caller told researcher Penn Jones, Jr., that the man with the umbrella was a former Dallas insurance salesman named Louis Steven Witt. Jones contacted some local newsmen (Jim Marrs being one of them) and together they confronted Witt, who then was working as a warehouse manager. Witt refused to talk with newsmen but acknowledged that he was in Dealey Plaza on the day Kennedy was killed.
Jones later wrote: "I felt the man had been coached. He would answer no questions and pointedly invited us to leave. His only positive statement, which seemed to come very quickly, was that he was willing to appear before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in Washington."
Witt indeed appeared before the Committee during its public testimony. His story was comic relief compared to the intense scrutiny of witnesses like Marina Oswald and Warren Commission critics. His story was facile and improbable and when the umbrella that Witt claimed was the same one he had had in Dealey Plaza in 1963 was displayed, it suddenly turned wrong-side out, prompting one Committee member to quip: "I hope that's not a weapon."
Witt told the Committee that on the spur of the moment, he grabbed a large black umbrella and went to Dealey Plaza to heckle Kennedy. He claimed that someone had told him that an open umbrella would rile Kennedy. While Witt offered no further explanation of how his umbrella could heckle the president, Committee members not Witt -- theorized that the umbrella in some way referred to the pro-German sympathies of Kennedy's father while serving as U.S. ambassador to Britain just prior to World War II. They said the umbrella may have symbolized the appeasement policies of Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who always carried an umbrella.
According to Witt:
"I think I went sort of maybe halfway up the grassy area [on the north side of Elm Street], somewhere in that vicinity. I am pretty sure I sat down. . . . [when the motorcade approached] I think I got up and started fiddling with that umbrella trying to get it open, and at the same time I was walking forward, walking toward the street. . . . Whereas other people I understand saw the President shot and his movements; I did not see this because of this thing [the umbrella] in front of me . . . My view of the car during that length of time was blocked by the umbrella's being open."
Based on the available photographs made that day, none of Witt's statements were an accurate account of the actions of the "umbrella man" who stood waiting for the motorcade with his umbrella in the normal over-the-head position and then pumped it in the air as Kennedy passed.
Witt's bizarre storyunsubstantiated and totally at variance with the actions of the man in the photographsresulted in few, if any, researchers accepting Louis Steven Witt as the "umbrella man."
And there continues to be no official accounting for the dark-complexion man who appears to have been talking on a radio moments after the assassination. The House Committee failed to identify or locate this man and Witt claimed he had no recollection of such a person, despite photographs that seem to show the "umbrella man" talking with the dark man.
Witt claimed only to recall that a "Negro man" sat down near him and kept repeating: "They done shot them folks."
Interestingly, one of the Committee attorneys asked Witt specifically if he recalled seeing the man with a walkie-talkie, although officially no one has ever admitted the possibility of radios in use in Dealey Plaza.
(continued)
